Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

;338 FISHERIES—PRICE OF FISH-SPAWNINGeven with other passages; in Pap. Fayum Towns (a.d. ioo), oft2 drachmcB for fish ; in Pap. Petrie III. 107 [e), 6, 24 drachmcBfor fish (third century B.C.) ; and in a Papyrus not yet (1918)published, 4 obols and 5 obols for a "male" Cestreus, or Mugiliapito.With salt fish, again, we have no certain leading. For2 dipla or double jars of this comestible the price was 2 drachmcB,but then their size is uncertain. ^ So again it doth not vantageus much to read of 240 drachmcB being given in a.d. 255 for" a jar of pickled fish " (AgTrrtoi;), because the size of the jar isstill undetermined. 2 Nor does " 56 drachmcB for 100 piecesof salt fish " (third century a.d.) solve the problem because,although a " piece of salt fish " probably implied some definiteweight, we have no data for discovering to what this amounted.^Nor again can we deduce anything definite from the statementthat in the third century a.d. a jar {Kipafxiov) of salt fishfetched i drachma i| ohols.The superior derision with which some writers regard thesimple, if inaccurate account, given by Herodotus of the spawningof the Egyptian fish betokens their ignorance of the parableof the beam and the mote.If Herodotus erred, what (and this I keep reiterating, onthe Kipling principle of " lest we forget ")for 2300 years as to the procreation of Eels ?about the theoristsAristotle with his " Entrails of the earth," Oppian with his" Slime of their bodies," Helmont with his " May Dew," otherswith their "Horse-hair," and Walton with his "SpontaneousGeneration " are they as correct zoologists as the Father ofHistory ? With him procreation resulted from a semi-direct ifinaccurate connection, but May Dews and Horse-hairs, etc., etc.,what do they or what could they do in the galley of contact ?After which outburst I pass to Herodotus. ^" Gregarious fish are not found in any numbers in the riversthey frequent the lagunes, whence, at the season of breeding,they proceed in shoals towards the sea. The males lead the1 Pap. Oxyr., III. 520, 21, a.d. 143.* Berliner Eriechische Urkunden, I. 14, col. IV. 18.3 Egyptian Exploration Fund Annual Report, 1906-7, p. 9.* Bk. II. 93.